Prehistoric Postscript

The view back in August 2010 just before it closed

As I was preparing to wrap up this look back at Prehistoric Forest, I wondered: what does the property look like today? So I made a quick prehistoric pilgrimage out to Marblehead earlier this week to find out.

As I approached the shuttered attraction, I was surprised to see that the mountain was still there.

Signs were posted to keep nosy bloggers from pulling into the parking lot to take pictures.

The sign was still up, but painted over.

Although the dinos are gone from Prehistoric Forest, there’s still at least one monster lurking just a few miles away to the west.

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In case you’re wondering, Fort Firelands is still open too.

Prehistoric Postcards

One of my favorite books is The New Roadside America: The Modern Traveler’s Guide to the Wild and Wonderful World of America’s Tourist Attractions (1986) by Mike Wilkins, Ken Smith and Doug Kirby. The book profiles a variety of roadside attractions circa the mid-1980s  – including Prehistoric Forest in Marblehead.

The side-splitting description makes it clear that the goal of Prehistoric Forest was to entertain. The authors noted, "At the Prehistoric Forest in Marblehead all pretense of history and education are abandoned. Tram riders are issued miniature M-16 rifles and are instructed to "kill the monsters." A prerecorded tour guide panics repeatedly and screams, "To the left! To the right! Shoot! Shoot!!!" whenever one of the feebly nodding dinosaurs comes into view. The forest echoes with the chatter of toy M-16 fire spraying in all directions. The tram driver remains unaffected by the mayhem, smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee as the tram slowly chugs along.”

That’s why it was so strange for me to discover a nice series of postcards issued by the owners of Prehistoric Forest in Marblehead that seemed, well, downright educational.

Here they are. The mail panel side of each postcard included a nice description of each “monster” and what it ate.

Triceratops

Ankylosaurus

Anticamelis

Corythysauris

Diatryma

Dimetrodon

Ornithalestes

Stegosaurus

The owners of Prehistoric Forest were probably hoping that its visitors would collect the whole set of postcards. (There might be more than those shown here, these dinos were “poached” from Ebay over the last few years.)

I’m not sure if we had any of these postcards, but I do remember coming home from Prehistoric Forest with little plastic dinosaurs much like you often found in a cereal box in the 1960s. This blogger has a collection of them and has a nice write-up of how he came to have them.

Prehistoric Forest in the Family Album

Prehistoric Forest has long been a favorite topic on this blog, as I noted a few days ago when I wrote about its sister attraction, Mystery Hill.

Well, shortly after my August 2014 post about the now-extinct dinosaur attraction, I received an email from the administrator of the "Oberlin in the Past" Facebook page. The post had reminded her of some old photos in the family album that had been unlabeled, and thus – a mystery.

She wrote, "Could these pictures be from that Prehistoric Forest? I have been wondering where they were taken.” She originally thought that the photos were from a family trip to California in 1963. "The signs are cut off, so I can't be sure – but I have been wondering for years,” she wrote.

Here are her vintage family photos. As you knew from the title of this post, they were indeed taken at Prehistoric Forest. You can compare the photos with the vintage postcard at the top of this post.

I pointed out to her that in addition to the "PRE-" and "-TORIC” signs visible in the photos, there's that Cheesehaven sign on the bench in the first shot which is a dead giveaway as to where the photos were taken! 

"Hah! Isn't that funny,” she wrote back. She planned to upload her now-identified photos to a vintage roadside attraction website.

Anyway, it was very nice of her to share some family memories, and provide a rare glimpse of Prehistoric Forest during its early days.

The Mystery Hill Girl

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been eight years since I paid my Farewell Visit to Prehistoric Forest and Mystery Hill out at Marblehead and wrote about it here on the blog.

(Both attractions have been favorite topics here, with my original post about Prehistoric Forest; some vintage postcards and a collection of articles about both attractions; and the aforementioned three-part Farewell series of posts when the attractions closed for good.)

I’ve found a few new Mystery Hill postcards since my last blog post. All were published by Buckhorn Press Inc. of Gatlinburg, Tennessee with photography by Gene Aiken.

Most of the postcards feature the same pretty young girl. She’s wearing the same outfit in each photo so it must have been a busy day of shooting. We’ll call her the Mystery Hill Girl.

Here’s the Mystery Hill Girl on the Mystery Table. I like that knotty pine paneling.

Here she is again. The caption for this postcard was, “DID YOU EVER SEE WATER FLOW UP HILL?”

In this shot, the Mystery Hill Girl has picked up a little buddy. Well, maybe she’s not really a little buddy because she’s taller than the Mystery Girl in one of the photos. (The caption is “NOW SHE IS TALLER, NOW SHE IS NOT!”)

In this shot, the little buddy takes a break from shooting and relaxes in the Mystery Chair.

There are also postcards out there for Mystery Hill attractions in different parts of the country. They feature other models, including some Mystery Hill Adults.

But it’s only the blonde Mystery Hill Girl who is featured on three postcards. I wonder if she gets a kick out of being recognized by postcard collectors everywhere?

Let’s hope she’s still out there somewhere in America, enjoying life as well as her fame.

Prehistoric Forest Revisited in Early 1960s Articles

Vintage postcard of Prehistoric Forest showing original building and tram
(Courtesy of ForwardLook website)

Summer is rapidly drawing to a close, and it's making me wax nostalgic (whatever that means).

It's hard to believe that it's been four years since Prehistoric Forest out near Marblehead closed. You might remember that back in 2010, I blogged extensively about both Prehistoric Forest and its companion attraction, Mystery Hill, back in this post, as well as my multi-part farewell series, and my postcard sampler.

Anyway, mentioning this gives me an excuse to post some vintage Sandusky Register articles about the late, great attraction. They provide a detailed history of the park that isn't available anywhere else.

First up is a short article that appeared in the Sandusky Register on July 13, 1963 – apparently shortly after Prehistoric Forest opened in May of that year.

Next is a collection of articles and photos that appeared about a year later in the Sandusky Register on August 22, 1964. One article introduces the reader to the wonders of Mystery Hill.

Lastly is an article that appeared in the Sandusky Register on October 8, 1965. It was written by Sue Hively, the newspaper's Women's Editor, and explains how James Q. Sidwell constructed and maintained the prehistoric "pets" for his park.

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Wonder whatever happened to all the dinosaurs? As recently as last week, I visited the Prehistoric Forest/Mystery Hill website in preparation for this post, and noticed that the owners were still selling off various dinosaurs and items from the park.

But today, the link is as extinct as their beasts.

More Vacationland Postcards

Heading out to Vacationland is one of my favorite things to do, and vintage postcards from that area always make me smile. Here's a few more from the www.cardcow.com vintage postcard website, which I've come to rely on recently for vintage images. Click on each for a slightly larger image. (And remember, the postcards are for sale on the cardcow.com website!)

Here's one of the old Sandusky Bay Bridge. It's unusual because it shows the center section that could be raised if a ship was passing through. (Today that section is gone, and the abandoned bridge approaches are used for fishing. My wife and I use them for eating our Toft's ice cream!)

The old Sandusky Bay Bridge

Here's a few from the Cedar Point of my youth, showing the Space Spiral (still a favorite of mine) and the much-loved Jungle Larry's Safari Island.

Space Spiral

Jungle Larry's Safari Island

Here's a few more Cedar Point favorites: the Pirate Ride and the Games Building. (When it was almost time to go home, we would linger by the Games Building, getting one last snack and sitting for a while before the ride home, in which we sadly realized it would be another year before we got to Cedar Point again!)

Pirate Ride

Games Building

Tent camping at East Harbor State Park near Lakeside-Marblehead is one of my great childhood family memories – and here's a postcard showing just that. East Harbor was just far enough from Lorain, to be interesting without being a long drive, and the proximity to Lake Erie made it seem like you were in another state – truly on vacation! 

Lastly, 2010 was the last year for Prehistoric Forest near Marblehead (which I talked about back here) and here's a vintage postcard showing their triceratops. (This must be their original one, as the one I encountered during my farewell trip to the attraction didn't look like this.)

Prehistoric Forest Postcards

Here's the vintage postcard I was referring to in my previous blog.

As you can see from my photo from over the weekend, he must have molted or something!

Here's a postcard that I picked up in the office/gift shop at Prehistoric Forest/Mystery Hill last weekend. 

The back of it looks like this. 

At first when I saw the deer, I thought that somehow Deer Park had muscled its way onto the back of the postcard as some kind of cross-promotion. But then I saw the name of the printing company in small print.

I thought it was strange that the postcard only mentioned Mystery Hill and not Prehistoric Forest. But at least I now know the name of the piece of furniture that I was standing on: the Mystery Table!

I wonder if they'll put the Mystery Table up for sale when the attraction closes? I don't know, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to put a lamp on it! Or a bowl of candy.

Farewell Trip to Prehistoric Forest Part 3

I was pretty excited about going through Prehistoric Forest one last time, and I wasn't disappointed.

Here are a few of the sights from the beginning of the trail through the Forest. I think these are some of the newer additions to the attraction, since the colors are kind of gaudy.

I'm not sure what a giant parrot has to do with prehistoric times, but he did appear on a vintage postcard.

And I have no idea what this thing is, but he looks pretty creepy.

For me, the best ones were the old classics that have been there for a long time. Like these guys.

Another classic is the mastodon, who also appeared on a vintage postcard. When you approached him and leaned in close, you got a big surprise – a faceful of water from his trunk!

The last and probably best was the T-Rex. He still moved around and growled, which was a nice nod to Prehistoric Forest's past, when most of the primeval critters moved (if I remember correctly.)

These are only some of the creatures that you see out in Prehistoric Forest. (I don't want to give it all away.) So make sure you get out there one more time before it's extinct!